25 Things to Tell Your Friends and Family About E-mail Marketing

Two of my children are old enough to know daddy isn’t a doctor, firefighter, or astronaut. So when they ask me to explain what I do for a living, I seem to always try a different approach. They know my company helps some of their favorite brands but they don’t seem to understand how or why. When you think about it, we all need to take a step back and decide how do we answer those two questions: what do you do for a living and what does e-mail marketing mean?

While many professions and industries have been around for decades, the e-mail marketing world is new and it’s important to define it. Not just to our families but to friends at cookouts, old classmates, and the CEO with whom who you occasionally share an elevator. So what does e-mail marketing really accomplish? And what might be an appropriate answer for many of us, whether you are a VP for a large consumer company, in charge of lead generation for a business-to-business company, or owner of a small business?

We help your favorite brands talk to their customers.

We can get urgent bulletins and news to interested parties in a flash.

We send special messages wherever you are, work, home and on the go.

We provide relevant information where people spend most of their time when on their computers, checking e-mail.

An e-mail from a favorite brand can make you smile, save some big bucks, or learn something you did not know before it landed in your inbox.

We can make the public keep talking about your Super Bowl ad six weeks after the big game.

E-mail marketing empowers my best customers and provides my company with rich insight into what customers are interested in and what they are not interested in.

When an e-mail promotion goes out, people start spending.

We let our customers and prospects know when we have something really cool to share with them before the general public.

We provide a crucial connection between our customers and our brand.

Our e-mail newsletter lets interested parties know what is new with our company.

We save our company money by communicating more efficiently.

We provide real benefits to our best customers that they choose to receive.

We drive interest and traffic to our sites and stores.

Our e-mails help our employees across the world know the latest and greatest news.

We deliver breaking news to where you want it.

When an e-mail offer goes out, thousands of people feel special.

We keep our customers loyal and coming back.

When we have a new product or service, we use e-mail to tell our audience about it.

E-mail marketing is our most valuable, targeted, and measurable form of communication.

We deliver what people ask for.

Our customers say they love our e-mails and the beneficial information and offers they get each month.

We provide the strongest return on investment within our department.

Some of these can hopefully assist you in articulating what e-mail does best whoever the audience is. Maybe it can provide the outside world clarity on what e-mail does and help open a few eyes within your company.

What else would you add? Who knows, maybe one of these will end up in an industry campaign like "Got Milk?"

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Jenkins was awarded the prestigious AMY 2010 Marketer of the Year from the American Marketing Association for being the top agency marketer and the Email Marketer of the Year at the Tech Marketing Awards held by the Technology Association of Georgia. Jenkins is regarded as one of the leading experts in the email marketing industry and is regularly cited by the media as such and called upon by the financial community to provide market insight and consulting.

Jenkins is the author of two definitive and highly regarded books on email marketing; The New Inbox (published in April 2013 by ClickZ/Incisive Media) and The Truth About Email Marketing (published by Pearson's Financial Times Press in 2008). Jenkins is currently the Email Marketing Best Practices Columnist for ClickZ, the largest resource of interactive marketing news and commentary in the world, online or off. His industry articles have been called one of the top 21 information sources for email marketers.

He has been featured in Fortune Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Adweek, Bloomberg TV, Wired Magazine, and scores of other leading publications and media outlets. Jenkins is a regular speaker at major digital industry and general business conferences.

Additionally, Jenkins is the creator of EmailStatCenter.com and SocialStatCenter.com, the leading authorities on email and social media metrics. Prior to founding BrightWave Marketing, Jenkins headed the CRM group at Cox Interactive Media.

Jenkins serves on the eMarketing Association's Board of Advisors among other civic and professional boards. He is also a mentor at Flashpoint, a Georgia Tech-based startup accelerator program. Jenkins is a graduate of Denison University in Granville, Ohio and resides in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood with his wife and three children.

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